No Leftovers & Quince Pancakes

Luckily I was able to give away a significant amount of the leftovers from Thanksgiving as people were leaving Thursday night. While I did pig out on the rest of the mashed potatoes and carrot cake on Friday, my gorging didn't last all weekend.

Now that my kitchen ad fridge are back to a manageable level of cleanliness and order, I am going to start cooking for this week. We have a special guest visiting for a weekish from Minnesota, my dear friend Colin. We've dragged him off the Range for some pre-holiday fun. So expect posts involving him over the next few weeks.



I bought 6 quince you might remember a few weeks ago at the farmers market. One of them went into my stuffing for Thanksgiving and the other five served as part of my table centerpiece. This morning two of those wound up in some very thick pancakes.

I used my standby pancake recipe, but jazzed it up a bit.


Quince Pancakes

2 quince
3 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar

1 1/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons margarine
1 cup water*

1. Wash and peel the quince. Core them and dice into small bite-sized pieces.
2. In a pot, add the cinnamon stick, 1/2 cup of sugar, and the vanilla extract to three cups of water. Dissolve the sugar and add the diced quince.
3. Poach the quince until they are tender.
4. In a mixing bowl combine the dry pancake ingredients (flour through salt).
5. Pull the quince out of the water, but don't drain the water.
*I used the water from poaching the quince for the pancake batter. You can use just a regular cup of water or soy/cow milk if you want.
6. Add the margarine and incorporate until batter is ready.
7. Mix in the quince.
8. Fry 'em up in a nice hot pan doused in cooking spray. (Note: I reapplied the cooking spray after each pancake to prevent sticking and that seemed to work).

This recipe made 5 HUGE pancakes. Of which Amanda and I only ate one each and are saving the rest for lazy breakfast the rest of the week.

I think I'll be making cookies and perhaps hosting a small dinner party later this week, so expect some fun posts soon!

In the meantime, happy eating!

-Robin-

A Turkey for Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I wound up hostessing dinner for seven and dessert for ten, all co-workers and friends. I got up yesterday morning and baked the stuffing and Turkish-style roasted vegetables first.

The Stuffing

I used pre-made bread cubes, a mixture of corn and white bread
1 quince, peeled, cored, and chopped
1/2 white onion, chopped
2/3 cup golden raisins
2/3 cup dried cranberries
2/3 cup chopped walnuts
4 cups vegetable stock
1/3 cup margarine (I used Earth Balance)
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon rosemary
1 tablespoon sage

1. Peel, core, and chop the quince. Toss it in a pot of boiling water to soften.
2. Meanwhile, in another pot, heat the vegetable stock, melt the margarine into it and add the spices.
3. In large pan, combine the bread cubes, onion, raisins, cranberries, and walnuts.
4. When the quince pieces are soften, add them to the dry stuffing ingredients in the pan and toss.
5. Pour the wet mixture over the stuffing and toss until everything is combined.

Cook on 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Turkish-style Roasted Vegetables*

2 large parsnips
3 large carrots
4 large red potatoes
5 1/2 head of cauliflower
1/3-1/2 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper

*The only reason I call these "Turkish-style" is because this is what my Turkish host mother used to make for me.

1. Peel the parsnips and carrots, dice.
2. Wash the potatoes, but leave the skin on for color. Dice.
3. Dice up the cauliflower.
4. Put all the winter vegetables into a large baking dish and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Bake at 350 degrees until the vegetables are soft, usually 30-45 minutes.

After I made the stuffing and the vegetables, I turned my attention to the turkey.

Now, I'm a vegan. And I was raised vegetarian. So this "making a turkey" is a mystery to me. I sought advice from lots of meat-eating people and enlisted the help of my good friend Andy, who came over around 12:30 to help me prepare the turkey.

I had gotten the turkey for free from my part-time job. The turkey was 10-12 pounds. I submerged it in warm water in my sink (still in the wrapper) to make sure it was completely thawed. Andy and I cut the wrapper open to reveal the turkey. Andy washed it and removed any pin feathers and miscellaneous organs inside the bird. Andy had me wrap up and refrigerate the gizzard and the kidneys for later gravy making.

Andy, removing the things inside the turkey

Andy was greatly amused by the turkey

After the turkey was good-to-go, I buttered the baking pan and we salt, peppered, buttered the turkey. It then cooked in a series of 30 minute cooking-and-basting intervals for around four hours. Thankfully, Andy had a meat thermometer (my big fear was that the turkey wouldn't cook all the way and people would get sick!) and we probably over-cooked it slightly just to make sure it was completely done.

Andy and me salting the turkey

Andy and me, basting the turkey

During the turkey cooking process, I also made the standard mashed potatoes, green beans in a sweet soy sauce with walnuts, maple glazed sweet potatoes and acorn squash, and crescent rolls.

The mashed potatoes weren't recipe-worthy and the crescent rolls were made by a dough boy that I just rolled and baked.

Thanksgiving Green Beans

1 lb fresh green beans

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

1 tablespoon sugar

1. Trim and wash the green beans. I heated mine in a skillet, you could, of course bake them.

2. Combine the soy sauce and sugar. Toss in the chopped walnuts.

3. Pour the sauce over the beans and toss til coated.

Maple Glazed Sweet Potatoes and Acorn Squash

4 small sweet potatoes

1 small acorn squash

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped almonds

1/4 cup margarine

1. Peel and chop the sweet potatoes and squash into bite-sized pieces. Put them in a pot of boiling water and cook until soft.

2. In a small saucepan, heat the margarine, maple syrup, and brown sugar. Add in the chopped almonds.

3. Strain the potatoes and squash and pour over the sauce.

All of my guests brought items to share: Angela brought her grandmother's cranberry relish (AMAZING), Kevin made a vegan key lime pie that was to die for as well as my favorite carrot cake, and Andy made a sweet potato pie.

I was able to pawn off a lot of the leftovers on my guests as they were leaving last night. I did however make some mashed potato patties this morning drenched in corn meal and then fried.

Not bad for my first full Thanksgiving with a real turkey. Of course I couldn't have done it without the help of my amazing friends and co-workers.

This is still the sort of turkey I prefer

I hope everyone had a memorable Thanksgiving full of love and fun!

Happy happy eating!

-Robin-

It's Not Me, It's the Quince

When I talk about quince, people tend to react in a way similar to conversations about unicorns, leprechauns, and or the Easter Bunny. Quince are imaginary fruits, especially to most Americans. None of my friends are quince-o-philes like me, in fact, I'm the only person I know who's ever had a quince. (My first quince experiences was when I lived in Ankara, my host mother made an incredible poached quince dripping in honey.)

I religiously read certain food blogs and it seemed to me in the last few weeks that everyone is talking about quince. I was really starting to get sad, given the lack of quince in the mid-Atlantic region. Imagine my surprise then when at the farmers market two weeks ago there was a crate labeled "QUINCE" overflowing with bumpy, roundish green-yellow kinda fuzzy and sweet smelling goodness. I bought five.

And yes, they were expensive. But I'm okay with that. I'll go easy on the lattes to balance out buying a half dozen of them a week until their season is finished and they vanish again.

Once I bought the quince, I realized I wasn't entirely sure what I planned to do with them. Luckily, a special occasion presented itself: my good friend Andy and his father were in town looking for an apartment (Andy recently took a government job and is moving here). I wanted to make something special for Andy (and his father, Tim, who I am a huge fan of). After a lovely dinner at Mai Thai - what can I say, everyone I take there loves it - I had Andy and Tim back to my apartment for a quince and blackberry pie.

I bought the pie crust from the My Organic Market in my neighborhood. Because I'm very, very lazy. I used blackberries because, quite honestly, I had a bag of them in my freezer. Again, lazy.

Here's the pie before it was cooked. There isn't an after photo because as soon as it was done, it was eaten. Tim, Andy, Amanda, and I all had pieces. The leftover slices went to my neighbor Amalea and her brother Austin, who had been redoing the tile in her bathroom all week and needed something sweet and homemade. But imagine this photo only browner and you pretty much got the gist of what it looked like cooked.

Quince Blackberry Pie

1 pre-made pie crust

5 quince, peeled, cored, and cut into bite-size chunks

4 cups water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 stick margarine (I used Earth Balance)

1 cup of oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup frozen blackberries

*I basically just made all those measurements up because I just - made the pie - and didn't measure anything, I'm sorry.

1. Peel, core, and chunk up the quince. Don't cut yourself, they're hard as a rock.

2. In a big pot, dissolve the sugar, add the cinnamon stick and vanilla. Drop the quince in to poach them.

3. While this is going on, coat the pie crust in margarine, prick a few fork holes into it, and bake it so its nice and brown.

4. When the quince are soft and sweet, ladle them out into the warm, golden pie crust.

5. Strategically place blackberries on top of the quince in some sort of artistic fashion.

6. Cover with a crumbly topping you've made out of margarine, oats, brown sugar, and ground cinnamon.

7. Bake at 375 degrees until the top is crunchy, the blackberries have melted slightly into the quince, and the crust is darker but not burned.

8. Serve it with vanilla ice cream and make your guests extremely happy.

Otto, taking a nap on our futon while Amalea was doing demo work on her bathroom tile. We seem to like to end posts with cute animals - so there you go!

Happy Eating!

-Robin-

Resurrecting Our Appetites

As evidence by the photo below of what it looks like outside my dining room window, it has been a while since I've posted. I apologize.


Transitioning back to my hometown as a working adult has proved more of an adjustment than I imagined. But that's an excuse and not a very good one at that. Expect more posts here. Very soon. And more frequently than not.

Working on this blog made me extremely happy when I was doing it. And I could use all the happiness I could get. And yes, those are chicken nuggets. I took this photograph of The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, an art installation in NYC when I was there a few weeks ago for work. It was incredibly brilliant and one of the best things I've seen in a long time.

Otto, our next door neighbor's dog, will be making frequent UCC appearances

And while Biz is in Dublin I will try to hold down the fort around here (and do a better job than I have been!). I'm sure when Biz gets back and settled we'll be able to hear all about Dublin and Ireland and all the theatre she's been doing (not to mention everything else)! So look forward to her return in the next few months (I know I am!)

Other than decorating fruits and vegetables for the various holidays of this season, I have been cooking a lot and the forthcoming posts will reflect the abundance of my local farmer's market, the introduction of Kevin Vegetarian Cook Extraordinaire, and Amanda's new job at Trader Joe's.

These jazzed up scones are just a sample of what's to come. They were created from a raspberry scone mix our neighbor Amalea gave us, which I added dried cranberries, almonds, and chocolate chips to. Ashley (roommate from Jordan/recent DC transplant) had to come over and help me eat all of them.

Clearly my friends and family are excited about the UCC being revived, not just because it makes me so ridiculously happy but because they want to be subjected to the abundance of food stuffs they will be forced to eat in the near future.

Happy Eating! You'll be seeing me soon!

-Robin-